


Enigma

by TeriyakiPrinces



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, I'm really hoping to make this work, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeriyakiPrinces/pseuds/TeriyakiPrinces
Summary: She damn well prayed her gamble about the Rockbells would pull through. If it didn't, she didn't even want to contemplate what the military would do with her. Or to her. Either way, she was determined to make herself a life in this backwards world- if that involved legal documents forged for her by the military and a lot of sheep, then so be it. OC fic.





	1. POW

**Author's Note:**

> Enigma
> 
> By TeriyakiPrinces
> 
> Rating: Teen+ Audiences, but whatever.
> 
> Warnings for the chapter: Medical talk, realism in an unrealistic situation, swearing, mortality.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.
> 
> Reviews welcome, as well as any plot suggestions or help- especially if something seems really hard to believe!
> 
> Edited and formatting fixed 1/28/17 on FF.com

General Brannen opened the door to the interrogation room, and stood in the corner to inspect the room's sole occupant. There was a young woman in the purposefully uncomfortable metal chair, strapped to the desk with handcuffs. She had longish hair which was tangled and mussed as if she had been rough-housed before being chucked into the sterile room. She had looked up at his entrance, and he could see that she had not gotten any sleep in a long time, judging by the dark smudges under her eyes and the dull way her eyes lazed over his form. She had tried to sit up, but her exhaustion showed even in her posture. She wore only a strange, casual sort of shirt with short sleeves and tight uncomfortable-looking pants from a material he couldn't recognize.

Strange clothes for a strange case, he mused.

He checked over her file once again. Her physical examination was completed before he got there, and the file was fleshed out as best as the investigators and physicians could manage- even so, it consisted of a measly two forms.

The woman claimed to be sixteen years old, which he could attest was possible- if only on a slim margin. She seemed older, but without proper documentation no one could really be sure. She wasn't Amestrian- that was a point highly underscored in her medical file. Her bone structure and coloring was similar to someone of Aerugan or Cretan or even Drachman descent, but some of her features were similar enough to Eastern Amestrian to leave a healthy speculative tone to her origins. She spoke the language well enough, though some grammar and accent marks were confusing. She didn't act like the usual teenagers anyone had seen, and her psyche-eval showed she had a healthy enough cynicism to put her in the bitter adolescent category, and a sarcasm complex usual to radicals and military personnel. She had apparently held herself with enough dignity and poise to warrant the thought of being the daughter of a wealthy businessman or merchant who was rebelling against the status-quo, backed by the expensive leather trench coat on her person, but her lack of any public records stymied that thought.

That was where the theory concerning wealth were led even further astray.

She was missing a lung- completely gone, with no scar outside her body to account for the expensive surgery. It was noted as well that it did not seem as if the adolescent was much hindered by the lack of half the breathing capacity, indicating that she must have been born with the defect, or been used to having problems breathing. This pointed to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, common in high-poverty towns on the outskirts of Amestris, or Black Lung, encountered in polluted cities and coal-mining towns.

In short, most things about this strange supposedly-sixteen year old were an enigma.

"You are aware that lying about your age will not limit the severity of any prospective charges we may or may not bring upon you?"

A small grunt of affirmation.

"I will now ask you questions about yourself. You must answer to the best of your abilities." Another grunt came from her lips.

"You are 16 years of age."

Hmm

"Your name is Gaia Maurer."

Nod

"You come from Aerugo."

Her eyes sparked at that. "I never said that."

Her voice was rough with exhaustion, so he couldn't tell what she normally sounded like. It was probably safe to assume her voice was deeper than the average woman's.

"Just making sure you're listening. Where are you from, then?"

"I don't know?" That sounded a lot like the infamous 'amnesia excuse'.

"Was that a question? Do you not remember?"

"Um, no? No. I just don't really know what it's called here."

"As in this language?"

"Uh, yeah." That was another strange thing about the girl. She seemed to have an immaculate grasp on the language- not as good as a native Amestrian in Central, but that could have been down to the area she came from, a dialect, if you will. Yet, she missed some words entirely, like names of places and titles.

"I could have a map brought in?" He raised an eyebrow in askance, and she contemplated her answer before nodding with a sigh. He knew his comrades would have heard behind the one-sided mirror.

"Alright, Gaia. While we wait, why don't you answer me this question: How did you get past all of our defenses, and why did you let yourself get captured so easily?" Using her supposed first name was for both investigative purposes and to extract more information by getting more personal. A sound tactic when interrogating a sensitive case.

Her eyes were confused for only a split second before they narrowed.

"I don't know. One minute I was on a train, and the next I found myself standing in that huge office place staring at a man with an eye patch. I have absolutely no idea what happened between one point and the other."

There it was again- an incomplete story that proved more and more that she wasn't a trained spy or assassin- if she were a professional, she wouldn't have gotten caught. She would have had a story that checked out in every way- including (forged) documents with proof of identity and residence, the kind of things you looked for when trying to incarcerate an illegal alien or terrorist.

A click of the door latch announced the map being brought in. The man spread it out on the metal table between them, facing 'Gaia'. She scanned the document before tilting her head and squinting at it. Brannen wondered if she needed glasses. Her eyes widened when her eyes briefly skimmed the document, as if she had just realized what she was looking at.

Then she nodded her head to show she had found her answer.

"It's that big blue one to the right, on that body of water. You don't have a name for it, looks like. It's called Thrace. My mother was from there, but my father was from another country west of Amestris called Lendia. It looks like you've got very little on most countries, huh?"

All of a sudden, he was embarrassed by the incomplete map- most of the countries Amestris had never even tried to contact, as they were on the other side of the desert, and most were Xing's trade partners that they were given from informants.

On the other side, her story quite honestly could check out- and then again the fact she came from such far away lands, lands they had no connection to or ways to communicate with, could be a ploy to mask her presence. Either way, Brannen thought, she was here with no documentation, which made her an illegal alien. An illegal alien apprehended inside the Fuhrer's private study.

"Glad we've cleared that up, then. Now. You know the language well for a foreigner, don't you think?"

"Ah, yes, well, my dad taught me. His mother was from here- small southern town called Dublin, I think?" There she went again with the strange pronunciations. He checked the map again, and found that only the five main cities were labeled. She had no way of picking up that name, unless she had studied another map previously. That theory seemed to be quickly getting shot down, as well. Her confusion could be attributed to being told a long time ago, though, so her story could yet check out. If her grandmother was actually from Dublith, she would simply be reinstated as a citizen of Amestris.

He flipped to a blank page attached to her file and wrote down his findings in shorthand- partly to make sure it was added to her file, and partly just to make her nervous. He found that writing anything down in a manila folder in front of a prisoner made them sweat.

"Anything to add to that?"

"U-uh, no? I mean, yes! My grandma- she had a close friend here- she's hopefully still alive! You could ring her up, maybe?"

"Do you know her address? Any personal information such as a name?" She gave a quick nod of affirmation.

"My father's mother always said she had moved to live in the east, a town called Resembull or something, after she got married."

The name rung a bell- he thought he might have stopped by there with his company during the Ishvalan conflict.

"A name?"

"Uh, Pinako. Pinako Rockbell."

* * *

She prayed to God- or whatever she should call it now that she had met it, face to uhh... face?- that the gamble would pay off. It was a testament to her desperation that she was praying, as she had probably never prayed before in her life- at least not seriously. When she was younger she slept over at her religious friends' house and had been kinda-forced to pray before bedtime with them.

But, that was off-topic.

She hoped that this world was the one from the books- that she was in the right time, and that the same people that she had read about were in it.

To be honest, she was expecting to be thrown in some dank cell or outright assassinated- Soviet Union Prisoner of War style.

And, come on, what the hell was Truth playing at when it dropped her in front of the fucking Fuhrer?! That bastard was the most terrifying person-thing she had ever had the displeasure of meeting- a baddy so nefarious that his presence even on a fictional plane of existence was fucking frightening even to contemplate. And then she had to have been dropped smack dab in the middle of what looked like his personal study.

Argh!

So yeah, she damn well prayed her gamble about the Rockbells would pull through.

If it didn't, she didn't even want to contemplate what the military would do with her. She knew oftentimes execution wasn't the only other choice to release. The second world war could attest to that. Honestly, Joseph Stalin could attest to that single-mandedly.

Hah. Single-mandedly.

She was so fucking hilarious when she was about to die.

* * *

Gaia found herself staring at a tiny lady who couldn't be taller than four feet. Her eyes were obscured by her round glasses, glinting in the sunlight of the bright day somewhere in the east of Amestris.

She had barely comprehended being pushed through the system, handed a large manila folder filled with files, and herded onto a steam train by military personnel. It had finally clicked three hours into the train ride that she, Gaia Maurer, had managed to con a military government into forging documents for her, and gotten off Scott-free for what had first seemed to them as an infiltration mission.

She was ridiculously tempted to burst into tears and fall on her knees in front of this woman. This tiny, scary woman.

But, she gulped down her joy. She knew she still hadn't escaped the heat of the situation. She was tempted to use the old metaphor 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'.

No, instead she bowed succinctly to the petite granny, and intoned her gratitude in a way that Pinako Rockbell would know she'd get a full (highly edited for her own good) explanation once they were out of the train station and the guards who had escorted her to what the entire military state believed to be her grandmother's closest friend.

"Mrs. Rockbell! I've heard so much about you from my grandmother. Thank you so much for getting me out of that little... situation I got myself into he he!" she smiled widely, and raised a hand to her tousled hair- trains were a surprisingly comfortable place to nap, she found- in an attempt to seem bashful about the 'little situation' Pinako had pulled her out of. The bashfulness wasn't hard to fake, she just enhanced the already existent feelings of relief and anxiety she had already been feeling deep in her gut.

"Yes, well, couldn't have Katrin's granddaughter in such a rut, now could I? And why didn't you phone that you were coming, anyway! Could have avoided this entire fuss."

"I didn't seem to have time to get myself a phone-book, and then this whole mess started, you see. Thank you, again, for doing this for me- you were under absolutely no obligation to do so, and I am in your debt." She bowed again.

"I don't mind, I don't mind. You can repay that debt by helping out around the house and letting me know how your grandma's doing. Now, let's get going! Our ride's waiting outside, I don't want him to wait up."

And so, the two women made their way out, Gaia waving cheekily at her guards, wishing them luck on their way back to the capital. Their ride, it turned out, was a hay cart owned by a neighboring farmer to the Rockbell property. The sixteen year old was glad for the ride, as even with her short nap and predominantly staying seated for the past few days, she was exhausted. Her brain was still trying to comprehend what the hell was happening, and all she had dreamed of was ways to tell the Rockbell matriarch of her dilemma.

She would have liked to say she had plans A-Z fully developed depending on every minute factor she could encounter, but the truth was that she had barely come up with half an idea before she had to scrap it, before going on to the verge of a panic attack at her incapability to find a way to get in the old lady's good graces.

The ride was peaceful, and even the musty smell of the cart from the tons of hay it had transported every harvest season, as well as the smells of the country proved to calm the young woman's nerves.

One thing she had cleared up by grabbing a local newspaper was the date. February 2nd, 1913. Which meant she was a year early to the party, by what she could tell. It also meant she had some time to adjust before all the shit went down- two years or so before the final battle.

They reached the tall house in the middle of the fields, and both jumped from the tall cart- Gaia was surprised at the old woman's agility as she dropped from the back of the bumpy ride. They thanked Otto, the farmer, and made their way into the house and subsequently the kitchen.

In the hallway, she only briefly skimmed the pin board of photos, relieved at least a little to see familiar faces. That meant she wasn't too far back and could use her final story.

"Alright, spill. I have no idea how you picked me to get you out of trouble, but there better be a good explanation for it."

She flinched, but acquiesced that she deserved the harsh tone.

"Mrs. Rockbell, I will be eternally grateful for your help. I am who I say I am- that is, Gaia Maurer. I'm not some spy from another country. I am not from Amestris, that's at least true, but the fact stands that I have very little left to my name, seeing as my, my home is no longer accessible to me."

"And why were you locked up by the military in the first place?"

"That's something I don't understand either, actually. I was apprehended in the F- um, I was on a train somewhere in the north-east quarter, and then BAM! I'm in a cell being questioned."

Pinako was skeptical- that was clear as day. She had no problem helping out a sixteen year old in trouble- she had to raise four kids by herself, after all, and no one who did such a thing was untouched by even the smallest hint of compassion for any youths, no matter if they were related to you or not. Her problem, in all honesty, was that she had no idea if this girl was hostile. If she would do anything to hurt her family.

And yet, the girl had gambled her life- whatever garbage the military spewed at her she knew was complete bullshit, a bit of trouble her ass- on her, an old small-town surgeon.

"Doesn't explain how you knew my name." _If you mean me or my family any harm, you've got another thing coming._

Her mouth opened for her to start digging herself out of her hole, but instead foreign words left her mouth, a buzzing noise in the back of her head.

"I was in Ishval five years ago." Recognition sparked behind the old woman's glasses, and her arms slowly loosened in her crossed position across the table.

"I was ten in 1907, stranded after my parents had decided to travel around the world with my brother and I. I got caught in the thick of the war, and the only people who had any compassion to the little orphan girl were ones with white hair and red eyes- they weren't nearly as bitter and murderous as everyone makes them out to be.. They took me in and taught me the language, before they too were taken from me. I got injured in one of the attacks, but was saved by a couple of surgeons. They patched me up, and I helped them as much as possible with an injured leg- bringing water to the patients and such."

She couldn't stop, and tears of frustration as she battled for some _damn_ control spilled from her eyes. She conceded that it wasn't as if anyone would believe her if she had told them the truth- that an entity by the name of Truth had sucked her from one world and spit her out in another that she had only read about- and obsessed about- in book format, and yet she felt guilt well up in her as her own not-voice damned her. There was no way of escaping this world, and this story, if she, or whatever it was speaking for her, dug her her own grave, and chained her coffin to the people most involved in the mess about to be made of this god-forsaken country.

"I was, there, when the Ishvalan warrior they had treated woke up." Imagining the event, bile was easily conjured into her throat. Now that she knew this world was real, all the violence she read about, every death was that much more horrid.

"Even in their last moments, they only thought of their little girl. They wanted you and Winry to know that they were sorry that they wouldn't see you again." She had always been able to cry on demand, a factor of her chronically dry eyes, but she found she didn't need to try very hard as she glanced at the near-heartbroken look the old woman in front of her had on her face.

* * *

_She dreamt of a vivid landscape riddled by craters, with a huge wall roughly transmuted to one side and flames spreading as far as the eye could see. Ruins towered above her, and she felt her bare feet make routine slapping sounds against the decimated road, gravel and glass alike piercing her soft soles. She screamed a name, but couldn't seem to hear over the laughter of someone behind her. She turned, terrified eyes hitting their mark as she scrambled backwards, away from the man whose long black hair whipped around him as his red eyes gleamed, a red light as if a splinter of a back-lit ruby passing through his silhouetted body, settling near where his heart would be._

_But this man was not human. He was a monster. He had no heart for the shard to corrupt. Not anymore._

Gaia awoke screaming in a jumble of blankets, the furrowed brows of old woman Pinako above her. She had a cold compress on her forehead, and she could see the sleepy form of a girl she vaguely recognized as Winry in the light of the doorway.

* * *

She stayed in a highly fevered state for three days, tossing and turning and sweating through the worst of it. She vaguely registered having trouble breathing and the world spinning too much for her to even lift a hand as she was tended to by the two females in the house. She was grateful that one was a surgeon and another well-enough versed in anatomy to be able to construct limbs that hooked into nerves.

As it was, she found out what her Sacrifice was two days after the first dream- nightmare, memory.

Half of her lungs, as it turned out, were nowhere to be found.

She had stared at the tiny woman as she told her of her newest problem, not comprehending the words 'why didn't you tell me you only had one lung, you stupid girl?!'

She had both her lungs in her before the little trip the Universe had booted her on.

Her hesitance was telling, though, and Pinako Rockbell, ever the sharp woman she was, stared hard at her, before leaving the room and her patient to recuperate in peace.

Peace, she thought vaguely, would not come for a long time.

* * *

After three days of nightmares, Gaia had to acknowledge they were no mere constructs of her imagination. They were memories of the life she had apparently lived here- it seemed Truth had awaited her to make herself a place in this new world, nestle herself tentatively into the lives of the people around her, and had accordingly changed it so _his_ lies were now facts.

Because that was what must have happened, Gaia reasoned. It was Truth speaking through her, ingraining her with memories and knowledge she would need to live here. Why, she had no idea why it was helping her in any way.

She wasn't so sure a lung was equivalent enough exchange for the changes taking place around her, a world being shifted to accommodate her existence.

The fact still stood, though, that she could remember the Rockbell's faces, remember the relief she felt as her forehead was caressed by Sarah's cold hands, and when they let her out of the cast which had immobilized her for neigh-on two weeks. Her knee injury and her scar which had previously been from crappy genetics and the subsequent surgery were now from her brush with death in the Ishvalan quarter after becoming orphaned by a blunder from an inexperienced alchemist.

She remembered her parents- mother from Thrace to the east, father half-Amestrian and half Lendian- and her brother who looked more like their mother than anything, where she looked like her grandmother, swallowed by the rubble and viscous ground.

She learned they didn't scream. They hadn't the time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enigma
> 
> By TeriyakiPrinces
> 
> Rating: Teen+ Audiences, but whatever.
> 
> Warnings for the chapter: Science talk. Cursing.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa

When Gaia's fever died down, the three female occupants of the prairie house in the countryside of Resembool began implementing a physical therapy schedule, disguised as housekeeping, for the young woman.

At first, she would help Pinako with the cooking, which slowly became Gaia cooking lunch to allow Pinako time to teach Winry everything about muscle groups and different bodily functions in human beings. She'd cook, and they would sit at the large kitchen table strewn with medical texts as she listened.

Gaia, though, was set in expanding her chores, because dammit she needed to do something for these two. Something more.

So, she began cleaning- first it was just dusting and returning the multitude of medical and mechanical manuals around the house to their respective places on the old oak bookshelves in the living room.

It was two weeks or so into her new life with the Rockbells that she wandered into the attic of the house. There, Gaia found the proof of the differences of this world to her original one.

The expanse of the attic was completely filled with stacks of books and what she could only expect to be boxes filled with similar materials. There was dust covering everything in an even carpet that looked to be a few month's worth of accumulated grime, and the window at the end of the room was cracked.

Some of the books were strewn across the floor, open, as if they were left there in great haste. There were papers with what she could barely make out as writing and drawings of strange diagrams on them- written in a childish hand.

_Transmutation circles_ , her mind promptly supplied when she knelt to take a closer look.

All of a sudden, she felt the urge to properly sit down and read through all the notes and books forgotten, shunned, even, in this dusty, dim room.

A treasure trove of information on how to do the impossible lay before her, and she ached to tap into that power.

Only, it wasn't impossible now, this magic, was it?

* * *

 

She studied like a mad-woman.

She started with a book she found shoved in the back corner of the room- however much she disliked it, she needed to start with the basics of Alchemy. Just like in art or writing, if you didn't know the basic structure of an object or human being or you didn't know basic grammar there was little you could do to improve your skills, Alchemy had concrete principals you needed to know, not to mention understand, to be able to apply or even attempt to transfer energy to transmute even the simplest of elements.

For this new brand of study, she started off with the Periodic Table of Elements and the make-up of those elements, including the atom formations and charges. Aside from theory (which she wasn't completely hopeless at, thankfully) her ability in practical application exceeded most standards- give her some facts and instructions, and watch her go!

Despite Gaia's barely-passing grade in physics and chemistry (she was more of a history and art kind of girl), she actually wasn't half bad at it. She was, _used to be,_ prone to procrastination and laziness, which didn't endear her to her teachers, and without much motivation to get out of such a rut, she had little interest in the subjects' coursework (such as doing her homework).

Now, though, she had all the motivation in the world. It could, someday, get her out of an actual life-or-death situation.

She wanted, nay, _needed_ to be useful if it came to that.

Call her paranoid, but that was damn good enough reason for her continued diligence in her new-found studies. She didn't want to be owing anyone life debts, now did she? Self-sufficiency had a lot of advantages.

And so, she picked up pen and paper again to start picking through dry (though most were, in fact, quite fascinating) tomes of theory on the once-fantastical manipulation of the material world.

She enlisted the help of spry, young, Winry ("I'm old and my back hurts, _come ooon_!") to carry the heavy boxes down the rickety attic stairwell and out to the backyard. There, she aired out the musty and dusty (and some which were damaged from a leak in the roof) books. Pinako had watched from the back porch as she rocked in her rocking chair and smoked a pipe, exasperated as her two girls (when had it become _her two_ _girls_?) lay out books that had led two boys she had helped raise down a dark path.

She had her suspicions, of course, but she wouldn't voice them quite yet.

Every day, without fail, Gaia would sit out on the porch, or inside on the colder days that still cropped up on the tail-end of winter in Resembool, and sketched out rocks, wood, and other inanimate objects in her sketchbook. She reckoned she'd written out more equations in those first few weeks than she had ever done before in her own free time. Sometimes, she even caught herself wishing for old Mrs. Keisa from sophomore year to be there to check over the more complex work she'd not been so confident about, or those math books with the answers in the back, but instead she went either to Pinako ("Granny", she'd insisted) or to Winry.

Their first reaction to her questions was awe at her detailed depictions of the limestone chip she had found, or the spruce pole holding up the porch. She tried to deflect their questions on the subject of her drawings, as she was actually quite stiff after so little practice for so long, and back to the math that she's starting to despise a bit less.

Alas, "You're an artist, eh?" and "Oh wow! That's really good!" get her drafted into helping Winry study anatomy and the use of technical illustrations in Automail design, which the young girl is decent at already, honestly. But Gaia had the experience, skills, and knowledge to help the 13 year old improve, so that's that.

Within two months of studying and teaching, Gaia wonders about Truth.

Not _Truth_ , per-say, but _the Truth._ Was she like Edward, Alphonse, and Izumi? If she clapped her hands, would she find that she could transmute anything without a _transmutation circle_?

Did her lung pay the price for Truth? Because, fuck, she really didn't think so.

Truth (or God, or the Universe, THE ENTITY, dammit) had already done so much to the world she found herself in, and she thought that was what her organ had payed for, but now she wasn't that sure. What if, if she tried, _it_ would take something else from her? Her memories of her life _before?_ Her free will?

She wouldn't, couldn't, risk it.

Either way, she was now nearly perfect at drawing those glorified circles, so she had that going for her.

* * *

In the following months, Gaia fully settled into life in the countryside, and, more importantly, life with the Rockbells.

It was a quiet life in the outskirts of the Eastern quarter of Amestris, interjected with rigorous hours of poring over books she had no idea how old (not to mention trying to decipher the boxes of journals she suspected were written by Hohenheim, and, furthermore, trying to read his handwriting, because _damn_ , it was like another language.) and runs to the town for food and other supplies.

On one such supply run, Winry and Gaia split up- Winry to the post office for a vintage Automail model delivery she was expecting any day now, and Gaia to the Thursday market for the most important part of her day- food.

Halfway to the butcher's, Gaia was almost bowled over by an over-enthusiastic blonde ball of energy. Winry was squealing, jumping up and down (with her hold firmly around Gaia's waist). She was likely trying to have Gaia jump up with her, but as her shorter height most often dictated in such actions against her taller companion, she was simply jostling her friend around with her enthusiasm.

"Oi, Winry! Stop! I'm gonna drop all the bags!" And true to her words, a bag full of plump apples fell to the dusty ground, no doubt bruising their perfect red sheen.

Winry, thankfully, let go of the older girl, and started to twirl around instead. Gaia let out a snort that morphed into a bark of laughter at the ridiculous girl in front of her as she stumbled on the uneven cobblestones of the Market Square.

"They wrote! _Wrote!_ We haven't heard anything, nada, in months! I can't wait to read it! But Granny will want to read it, so we have to get back home as soon as possible! How much longer 'till you're done?"

Gaia basked in the brief warmth that filled her being at having herself included when Winry talked of their home, and grabbed the ecstatic teen by her tanned shoulders to steady her, pointed behind herself with her thumb, and indicated the butcher shop one door down from their current position.

"Got to go to Isaac's first, and then Otto said he'd give us a ride back." They began walking. "So, who wrote? Is it the Elrics?"

Winry, sobered up, gave a small, sad smile.

"Yeah, it's Ed and Al."


	3. Chapter 3

It only took Winry two months in close quarters to begin thinking of Gaia Maurer as an elder sister. She began to feel a warmth whenever Gaia woke her up for breakfast, or sat down with her to help with her drawing skills. She never seemed the least bit annoyed with Winry's inquiries into her own Alchemy studies, and she actually came to Granny and her for help with calculations she wasn't sure about (she had some self esteem issues when it came to complex math, though she really did have a good grasp on it).

Gaia was warm, and kind, and got straight to the point in a way that didn't come off as dismissive and irritated, but rather doting and invested. She cleaned Winry's cuts when she got carried away fiddling with her metal and wires, and sat and talked with Granny and her whenever she had the time aside from studying.

And she studied furiously, with books that Winry only heard come to life at the 16 year old's recounting, dusty journals, and a lot of human intuition.

This brought to mind two golden boys she grew up with, who had studied just as hard, and paid an unimaginable price for their arrogance.

And yes, she saw Al as a younger cousin, and Ed as her best friend, schoolyard bully, and partner in crime, but they had abandoned the titles of brother, of family inseparable, when they went away with that Izumi woman, and returned only to lock themselves away and to shun her friendship on a quest doomed to fail.

And yes, she was bitter, but could anyone blame her? They grew up together, Granny and she helped them get through their mother's death, andWinry offered them unconditional support only to be cast aside in the pursuit of something she understood, yet didn't.

She had wanted to scream at them in the months following their accident that they still had her, and Granny, and for God's sake, they still had a father out there who they could go out and find!

But she didn't feel guilty for distancing herself from them, and taking in this mysterious girl as a sister, a part of her family, because who else did Gaia have but their little family, the old surgeon and automail-enthusiast-turned-engineer?

Winry loved Gaia like a sister, and she loved her even more when she came out with her qualms, and Gaia understood and explained to her that she didn't want to replace anyone in Winry's heart, that she'd just make herself a place there, nestled right between Edward and Alphonse Elric and the rest of the Rockbells.

Gaia Maurer was warm, and kind, and understanding to a fault. She was humble, modest (enough to not even mention when her birthday had passed on the 31st of May), yet strong and opinionated beyond measure.

And Winry loved her like a sister, so that was that.

* * *

Summer in Amestris was muggy and hot. Wave after wave of heat traveled from the nearby desert, sweeping most of the country with extreme heat. Northern winds, theoretically, brought cool temperatures, but as that humidity was brought down towards the East of Amestris it melded with the desert heat to create an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.

This weather for the majority being affected was simply unpleasant. But, well, for a 16 year old with a pretty serious respiratory condition meant that life was hell in the summer for Gaia. It became so laborious for her to breathe that Winry and Granny Pinako started a neighborhood coalition to clean out the basement of their small yellow home, which was much cooler and shielded from the brunt of the offending weather, for Gaia to move into for the summer.

These new living quarters meant not only the ability to breathe properly for Gaia, or that she wouldn't be getting that tan she had been looking forward to since last summer, but it also meant she could stop worrying the Rockbells with the nightmares she was still experiencing, and the cold sweat she'd wake up with on more than one occasion.

Even _before_ , she had not been one to bother her parents with unnecessary reminders of the damage that her oh-so-glamorous genes had wrought upon her body. Up until the summer heat had bogged the area down, she had not had too much trouble breathing, because of a condition she had developed two years prior that her doctor called Acute Asthma Exacerbation. Basically, she was prone to her lungs contracting at inopportune times, making it harder than usual to breathe. She had to have an inhaler on hand wherever she went to stop any episodes, and after two years of the disease cropping up, she was used to breathing problems.

Now, though, she didn't have her inhaler (the life-preserving miracle machine), and she had one less lung to work with, but it had been more than four months since she had come to this world, and it seemed as if her lung condition had been eliminated alongside half the problem organ.

Which, on one hand, meant that that was one life-threatening thing she could stop worrying about, and on the other, she didn't want to even think through the pros and cons of trading in a disease for the lack of a lung- which, by the way, people have been known to survive without, but usually with late-20th and 21st century medical technology.

Meaning that Gaia was constantly on guard for Izumi Curtis-like coughing fits involving liters of blood.

* * *

Before anyone realized, it had been more than half a year since Gaia had been dropped into this world, half a year since she had been living with the Rockbells, and half a year yet since she had began her crusade through the materials she had found on Alchemy. Half a year of daily studying- note taking, reading, calculating, memorizing. About 180 days of pushing herself as hard as mentally, and physically, possible.

In that half year, however, she had not transmuted a single speck of dust.

Oh, yes, she had been tempted on multiple occasions, but she had never done it in the end. When the river flooded in spring, she helped with securing homes against floodwaters with only her manual labor.

Maybe it was fear- fear she wouldn't be able to harness the natural energy to do anything, fear of the power she would hold if it did work. And, of course, fear of Truth itself.

She was sure she'd always have a niggling fear of the entity that had torn her family, her world, away from her.

Yet, ridiculously, and miraculously, enough, Gaia's first transmutation was an indisputable success.

It was a bit too rough on one side, sure, and maybe a bit too much build-up was visible over there, and of course it had transmutation marks all over it, that and the fact that it was still attached to the ground.

But!

But, she had managed the impossible- and the one thing she had been striving towards for six months now. And it had worked! She had transmuted soil- a matrix of minerals, organic matter, air, and water- sand, silt, and clay isolated and each transformed into a completely different material- iron, to be exact.

She had gone flawlessly through the three tenets of Alchemy – comprehension, deconstruction, and reconstruction – now memorized by heart and studied multiple times to make sure which rules applied. She had been sampling from soil all around the Rockbell grounds, separating out each compound meticulously for neigh-on a month to prepare for this moment. Not to even mention creating the correct transmutation circle.

From all her studies, she was relatively well prepared for all of the calculations and conversions- she had been dissecting all types of matter for her steadily-increasing personal collection of journals. She found that the closer the atomic structure of the original element to the final element, the easier it was to transmute.

Theoretically, all matter could be transmuted. The question that stumped most was how. Air was one of the rarest and most difficult alchemic transmutations- if you could transmute air, nearly anything was possible for you to do. Roy Mustang and Master Hawkeye were the first to come to mind in that equation, and Gaia knew that it would most likely die out with the Colonel. The easiest to transmute, obviously, was solid matter- experimentation on that front had been going on for many years previous, and the entire alchemic method was derived from drawing transmutation circles on solid matter.

Once Gaia was over that hurdle, it took no time at all for her practical application of Alchemy in everyday situations skyrocketed from zero to multiple times a day. Within the next month, she had graduated from pure elements (with a large exception for gold) to alloys such as brass and steel.

Her first large-scale transmutation, that of the roof of her yellow home (and when did it become home?) had her out like a light for 12 hours straight. After that, there was absolutely no stopping her in her endeavors to perfect what she saw as a new form of art.

Much like a muscle, the more you exercised Alchemy, the larger and more precise the scale of the transmutation.

She was hopelessly, absolutely, irreversibly, in love.


	4. Chapter 4

Gaia's new home was... strange. There were some key differences in this world that she had perceived from her extended stay here. For one thing, the air felt different- and it wasn't just the difference in climate that bothered her, either. It was as if something foul seeped up from the ground, leaving a bad taste in her mouth. When she inquired about it, Granny Pinako simply looked sadly at her and told her that Amestris was witness to a lot of bloodshed.

Resembool was a small town to the South-East of Central, on the banks of a river called Rain. Most of the farms in the town proper were in the business of wool production- resulting in many, many sheep.

The town was mostly comprised of a train station, the town hall, an open air market during the milder months of the year, a small grocery shop, a butcher shop, and a postal office. The population was a middling 2,000 occupants, most of which congregated once a month for a town meeting, or something many agreed was a play of catch-up with gossip.

That was, of course, how she remembered about the Dragon's Pulse and how Father's dark manipulations had tainted the Xingese perception of chi, or natural energy, running through the world.

Which, understandably, had her intrigued enough to begin a meditation regimen every morning to see if it at all helped with her perception of the mysterious energy she was already beginning to sense and use.

She took to not wearing shoes, and if she did she wore light sandals on the dirt and gravel roads in and out of town. The connection of bare skin to the earth, the floor even, helped her feel more grounded, made her feel strangely connected to this world.

Along with her barefootedness, Gaia was often perceived as, well, odd. She had strange quirks and ways of speaking, ranging from sounding ridiculously masculine to pulling her hand from the nape of her neck upward, as if she was used to having short cropped hair, to abruptly correcting her ever-slumped posture when she was thinking, as if someone had poked her back harshly.

But she was extremely useful to have around, and kept good company, so most of the rumors and talk that spread about her was mostly who she was visiting that day, or what her hourly rates were for some alchemy to fix this or that.

* * *

Her feet were sore and bruised for the first month without shoes, with her constant abuse of their soles, and her crying out at stubbing her toes became commonplace at the Rockbell home.

She often curses in another language, maybe two, and sometimes even forgets to switch back to Amestrian after a nightmare or muttered rant. Pinako and Winry have no experience with other languages, as most in Amestris do not, but they never seemed inclined to correct Gaia when she didn't notice, and for that she is grateful.

When Winry asked to be taught one of them, the one that's softer with a lot of vowels, Gaia is stumped. She quickly collects herself and suggests Winry learn the one with more harsh sounds, as it'll be easier for her to pronounce, and the grammar is more similar to Germ- Amestrian.

The younger girl doesn't mention her slip-up, and Gaia begins to hand-write a workbook with whatever she remembered she had learned in first and second grade.

* * *

After two years in one place, Gaia had become antsy. She was constantly expecting the Elrics to come knocking down their doorstep, and to be dragged into the chaos that she had obsessed about as a fifteen year old. Now, she was almost 19 years old and becoming stir-crazy in expectation of another laborious summer season. So, she had saved up some money from her escapades in fixing anything broken in and around Resembool town proper, and made her way by train to Central City. On her small, week long vacation, she would pick up some materials for Winry and Pinako, as well as use the city library to expand some of her knowledge of the country she had been calling home for nearly two and a half years. She would also, of course, buy new books of her interest, and maybe even grab a nice long novel to read.

She stayed clear of all military personnel and the large palace complex in the center of the city, not wanting to stir up any misunderstandings, even after two and a half years, and took to wearing a pair of sunglasses to shield her distinct eyes.

On her way back from Central, she had a bit of a layover in East City when she heard two blue-clothed guards murmuring behind where she sat waiting for her train to arrive.

"Did you hear? That criminal from Central got to another State Alchemist."

"God, that monster's in East City!? Who's the poor bastard he got to?"

"Fullmetal. He's alive, but apparently he's in pretty bad shape."

She ran into the yellow house after getting a ride from the train station by Otto, dropped her things in the foyer with a loud clump, and nearly shouted for Winry, when her voice filtered out of the living room, waxing poetic about the virtues of automail.

"Oh my, how wonderful automail prosthetics are!"

Gaia quickly calmed, the sentence jogging her memory. She had rushed home as fast as possible, and was prepared to run the way from the train station to the yellow house to warn the Rockbells about the impending visit, but it seemed that they had already gotten here.

She smiled as a blonde boy ran past her in a blur, and walked into the living room to see Winry fuming as she cleaned up her tools. Granny, who she could have sworn was in there, was nowhere to be seen.

"Heya." At the one-of-a-kind greeting, Winry squealed and launched herself at the taller girl, and was caught in a steady grip.

"I'm so sorry we didn't come to get you! I completely forgot you were coming back today, and Ed and Al were here for the last three days, and I've told you how crazy things get around here when those two are-" She was cut off by a sharp laugh.

"Breathe, Winry. I understand. Otto gave me a ride, but I could have run as well. I heard what happened in East City, I don't fault you for doting on your boys."

"Wait, what exactly happened there? Ed said they got in a big fight, but I don't know much else." Large blue eyes stared up at the girl-woman, pleading.

"Hah! I think that's for the brothers to tell you. Now, where's Granny? I got her the materials she requested, and I got some new manuals for you too, you little engineering otaku, you." Winry flushed at Gaia's wide grin, knowing she had heard most of the conversation she and Ed had.

"Granny's with Major Armstrong, an Alchemist who came with Ed and Al, probably." Gaia's grin took on a sinister look at the mention of the older Alchemist.

"I'll leave you to your work, then. I've got a few Alchemists to exploit." She could almost see Gaia's hands being rubbed together. She almost felt bad for Ed, Armstrong, and... oh God, Al.

Gaia had been told a highly edited story of the Elric brothers about a month into her stay with Winry and Pinako, when she had mustered the courage to ask about the two golden boys in the pictures in the hallway.

She'd been told they had taken the two boys in after their mother passed away from sickness, after which they had gone off to train with an Alchemy Master in Dublith. When they returned, she had been told, they were involved in an accident in which Edward lost a leg and an arm.

Which meant that her observant sister would quickly find out that Al did not, in fact, have a flesh and blood body. Whether or not Ed put him back together in time did not matter anymore.

She could sniff this type of stuff out from a mile away, it seemed. Last month she had managed to save Otto's barn from collapsing through intuition alone, just by catching the signs of a termite infestation a bit early.

What Winry had not picked up, though, was Gaia's look of sadness at the recounting of the events, and the sidelong glance Pinako had sent her as she raised her arm to her right rib.

Gaia knew well enough that Granny Pinako expected that she had attempted the ultimate taboo, human transmutation. And she had to concede that that was a legitimate suspicion to have.

She had lost a lot of people in this world, and her heart clenched every time she thought of them, so she could not say in good conscience that if she were given the chance to return to a world where her family was still alive, she would not give up another part of herself in a taboo ritual to reach that plane of existence.

* * *

The first thing that grabbed Edward's attention about the woman in front of him were her eyes. He had never seen that shade of green eyes before. Heck, he didn't think he'd ever seen green eyes, period. He could have noted how tall she was, because at nearly nine inches taller than him, she stood at 5'8" tall. He could have noticed that she was barefoot, or the large, ropy, silvery scar extending from somewhere around her knee, which strangely enough she didn't cover completely by her brown pants. But no, the first thing he sees of her are her green eyes that seemed to glow in the sunlight.

He is about a meter away from her, and she sweeps her eyes across his form, as if appraising him.

He began to prepare himself to rebuff her statement when she opened her mouth to say how-

"Young."

-he was?

Ed's eyes widened in surprise at her words, but not to seem caught off-guard, he scowled and took a defensive pose.

"You've got a problem with my age, hag!?"

"No. It just never really clicked that you were Winry's age. With how she goes on about you, you'd either think you were the devil incarnate or a middle aged man."

Ed could feel his face heat up, and- BAH! She wasn't even _smirking_ , dammit!


	5. Chapter 5

"Who the hell are you, anyway?!" Edward Elric yelled at the stoic woman. Who the hell did she think she was, walking up to them all stand-offish and _dammit_ , she was _tall_!

"I'm Gaia Maurer." His mind stuttered to a halt.

"You're _the_ Gaia Maurer?" Alphonse's voice piped up from behind Ed. The two brothers had received many letters over the past years from the Rockbells, detailing the goings-on of the prosthetics engineers' daily lives. Then, about two and a half years ago, about half a year after they left for Edward's State Alchemist Exam, Gaia Maurer had burst onto the scene. From the letters (read: novels) Winry sent, the two could tell quite clearly that Winry had taken to the girl like a fish to water- studying with her, helping her in every which way, and recently even becoming the girl's personal matchmaker (which was way too much information, thank you very much, and had led to even Ed feeling some pity for the female stranger).

Traveling as they were, the Elrics either called the Rockbells (rarely) or picked up any letters addressed to them on their monthly reports to Eastern Command's very own Colonel Bastard.

"I'm Alphonse Elric, nice to meet you." Alphonse stuck out his hand, and Gaia took it, smiling pleasantly at the suit of armor.

* * *

One moment, Alphonse was introducing himself, and the other his hand was being used as leverage by the eighteen year old, her bare foot using one of the chinks in his armor to gain altitude, and his helmet was being lifted from his shoulders. He flailed, careful not to crush the body holding onto him, and heard his brother exclaim loudly at the woman now peering into his empty body.

Oh, dear.

"That's some good rune-work for an eleven year old. Especially when you take into account you were bleeding out of two limbs."

Alphonse was confused for a moment before he realized she was talking to his older brother, while still having her head lowered to peer inside the armor.

"It's incredible how well the blood has kept, too. Under normal circumstances it would have flaked off a long time ago. But you know, blood runes are a foul piece of alchemy- I could feel it miles away. I could use this as a tracking mechanism, actually, if you added an amplification rune right under it- ah, but that would amplify the bond, and might rebound by expelling the resident soul. How fascinating."

"What the hell are you talking about, you psycho! And get down from there!"

At once, his head was back in place and the eighteen year old jumped down from her perch on him. She turned to face his brother, with a sullen smile on her face, as if explaining the mysteries of the world to a stubborn child.

"Sorry, I guess my way of showing you that I know your secret was a bit out of left-field."

Alphonse wondered whether left-field had some type of special meaning that only he was missing, before he realized what the older girl was saying and gaped at her, fluttering his limbs and stumbling over his words. Gaped as much as a suit of armor inhabited by a soul could, anyway.

"I-I-I- Y-You-Wha-WHAT?! How do you know?!"

"It ain't hard to extrapolate, bub." She knocked her knuckles on his hollow body, making it give off an echo as he quickly took a step back out of habit. "Two boys lose their mother, go on a rampage learning Alchemy- which is the only known way to restore life, if only in obscure theory, and get into an accident that leaves one with two limbs missing and the other all of a sudden in a suit of armor three times as tall as he was before?"

Now his livid older brother was spluttering too. Alphonse was speechless. Major Armstrong, who Al just now remembered was outside with them, was exclaiming about her deduction skills, and that if he hadn't known better, he'd have thought she had come from the Armstrong line.

"Either way, even if I hadn't figured it out from what the Rockbells told me, your chi is totally out of wack, even more so than the stuff I can feel coming from farther east." Chi? What was that? The word sounded vaguely Xingese, but he hadn't heard much of that language outside of the occasional restaurant they visited while in East City.

"W-What's chi, miss Maurer?" Major Armstrong asked, subdued from his previous outburst, and the younger Elric noticed his brother was reluctantly listening for her answer, his anger simmering below the surface.

"Oh. Sorry, I forgot." Forgot what? This conversation was throwing him in all kinds of loops. "Chi's the Xingese concept of what in Amestris you call natural energy, only this life energy is believed to metaphorically flow from the tops of mountains down to the land, nourishing everything it passes. The Xingese based their entire version of Alchemy, called Alkahestry, on the principle of the Dragon's Pulse, also known as chi." The recitation sounded as if from a textbook, and Al wondered if that's where she got it from.

It seemed as if the calm recitation had quelled some of Ed's rage, as he unfolded his tense arms from in front of his chest and relaxed his stance.

"So what you're saying is there's an energy in the ground that you can sense, somehow," He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at the tall girl, still looking down at him, "That can tell you when someone's committed the greatest Alchemical taboo possible?" If anything could calm his brother down, it was research or an intellectual conversation.

"Yes." That was probably the worst way to put it.

"Why should we believe you?! Maybe you're some spy, or you were told by some evil mastermind what happened or, or..." His brother was wide-eyed and hysterical, and Al could practically see the cogs turning behind his eyes, and dreaded where his theories were leading him.

Edward stalled, eyes wide as he gripped his hair and took a few staggering steps backwards, away from the girl in front of him.

"You know. Holy fuck, you know." Gaia rolled her eyes.

"That is what I've been alluding to, yes. I didn't want it to be awkward between us for Winry's sake. She's wanted us to meet for a long time, so I thought I'd just let you know right away that I knew about the transmutation. It would have been really exhausting keeping up the farce if we were to know each other for more than a day."

"Y-You figured out this much about us because _Winry_ wanted us to get along?! You _are_ insane!"

A metal wrench flew out of nowhere, hitting Ed in the back of his head, and a furious blonde made her way towards the group.

"She's not insane! And stop fighting! This isn't getting anyone anywhere, now just suck it up and accept that everyone here knows about why you're a State Alchemist, alright?! No secrets, no worries, everyone's good. Got that?" Winry growled the last part, shoving the wrench against the still fallen Edward's cheek.

"Yeah, yeah, but it doesn't mean I have to like it either."

"Fine" Winry huffed and stepped off of his chest.

"Fine."

And that, it seemed, put a halt to the accusations and litany of arguments roiling in his elder brother's mind.

* * *

Alphonse asked where she went when he noticed there were only five place-settings at dinner, and Granny Pinako told them Gaia had turned in for the night, stating that the spring air didn't agree very well with her. Alphonse noticed the furrow between her eyebrows and the tightness around her eyes that had nothing to do with the three all-nighters the two Rockbell women had pulled to fix his brother's automail.

"Granny, is miss Maurer sick?" Edward looked up from his food, startled at the question, but turned curious eyes at Winry and Pinako.

"She didn't look sick earlier."

"It's just something that comes around this time of year." That was a brush-off if the young Elric had ever heard one.

"She _is_ sick, isn't she."

"It's not my place to tell you, especially after that argument you two had with her. It's a private matter, and she hasn't disclosed much about it, even to me." Alphonse startled at the steel in her voice, and immediately backed down. He wondered, then, why he felt so concerned at that revelation.

Maybe he was worried about the only person to have ever figured out what had happened to them and not shown pity. Maybe it was her blunt honesty about it all.

Maybe it was because he felt like he'd come to know the older girl through Winry's letters, or maybe that was just his bias through knowing of her only through Winry's eyes.

He thought that it could also stem from the deeply concerned light in Winry's eyes as she pushed around her mashed potatoes, stealing glances toward the exit, as if willing the elder girl to appear.

* * *

Edward stumbled down the stairs, his left foot thumping on the wooden floor boards as he swerved into the kitchen, bleary eyed and still half asleep.

The sight that greeted him made him pause before jumping into a defensive position, arms up and left leg back.

There seemed to be some sort of creature in the kitchen, its back to him, long shaggy mane obscuring most of its hunched back, indistinct in the dim pre-dawn light. _It_ took a deep, rasping breath, and turned its- most likely hideous- head, slowly.

It spoke, breath rasping from deep within its' chest, asking him-

"Want some coffee?"

The Fullmetal Alchemist was shocked out of his disbelieving stupor, and flicked on the light switch, illuminating the kitchen with the bright artificial light.

The thing- was it a thing? Because he wasn't so sure anymore- hissed and hunched more as it threw an arm over its eyes.

"Goddammit, kid, don't you fucking know common courtesy?! Turn the damn light off!"

Oh. That wasn't a goblin or something, was it? Ed realized that the scratchy voice was vaguely familiar, if it smoothed out more, and if that hair was put in a ponytail then he was sure the creature-person would have a striking resemblance to-

"Maurer?! What the hell, woman!"

"You'll wake up the entire house, you moron! Keep it down!" a whisper yell came from beside him, where the woman had migrated as his sluggish mind acclimated to the new situation, and he watched as she flicked the light switch, sighing in relief as the kitchen was once again plunged into semi-darkness.

She turned to him, and, was she... pouting?

The tall woman stomped back to her original station at the kitchen counter, bare feet slapping against the wood floorboards, in front of the stove top and what looked to be a coffee pot.

That was definitely a pout.

But coffee was coffee, so he let the fact that she was ignoring her earlier outburst slide. So sue him for accepting a steaming cup of pure bliss from a grumpy goblin.

"What's up with the voice?"

"Haven't taken my meds yet." She rasped, and he had the strangest vision of her as an old warty witch, like one of those from the fairy tales his mom used to read to him and Al, stirring a cauldron rather than the young woman stirring sugar into her coffee.

But the fact that she needed medication meant that she was sick, as Alphonse stated the night before. And by the sound of it, it had something to do with her lungs.

He took a sip of his own heavenly elixir, and nearly moaned in ecstasy.

"That's the best cup of coffee I've ever had!"

"It's a recipe I learned from my mother. It's called Turkish coffee, but with a personal twist." She sounded proud, but there was a downward lilt to her lips that he could now see due to the dawn light peeking through the kitchen windows.

"We've heard a lot about you from the letters Winry and Pinako send us, but they never mentioned anything about your family." He almost regretted saying anything at all at the sad look that crossed her face for a spit second before her brow evened out once again.

Almost. He felt the need to vet this stranger that had found a way into his family's hearts, and for that he needed information and motives.

Gaia took a pill and threw her head back to swallow it with her coffee before steeling herself.

"That's because I don't have a family. I lost them during the Ishvalan Geno- Civil War. Sarah and Urey Rockbell ended up fixing me up, and I decided to repay some of the favor they showed me by locating their remaining family. Along the way, they became my family, too."

"I-I'm sorry for prying."

"No, you're not. But thanks for not apologizing for my family's fate. Pity is the last thing anyone needs when they've witnessed a family member die."

"Is this a bad time to interrupt?" came a meek voice from behind the two, and Gaia brightened up considerably, clapping her hands together as she stared at the younger Elric brother.

"Not at all, Alphonse! Now! I've spilled some beans, so it's your turn! I've heard a lot about you second-hand, but that's all from when you were twelve years old or younger. I want to get to know the rest of this family, so sit down and spill your guts with all the juicy stuff- and don't skim the Alchemy mumbo-jumbo, that's the best part, I'm sure!"

Her wide grin unnerved the brothers, and her request sounded more like a command, but they obediently sat down and opened their mouths.

If they didn't even entertain the thought of refusing, then no one would ever be the wiser.

* * *

Ed didn't know how to feel about this newcomer, yet.

She may still be a spy, or some evil goblin-witch, and he wasn't gonna trust her with no reservations for the time being.

But her cooking may just be what would win him over, in the end.

Gaia had set the breakfast table with six place settings, a stack of what seemed to be a fluffy take on crepes in the middle of it all, and a glass of what vaguely smelled like chocolate in front of each chair.

"What's this?" Edward asked as he eyed his glass suspiciously.

"Chocolate milk. It's been cooling in the fridge overnight. Have you never had it before?" She asked nonchalantly.

"No. And I'm not gonna." That drink had the word milk in it, and he wasn't gonna have anything to do with that foul stuff. He turned away from the sweet smell, arms crossed and nose in the air, an affronted look on his face.

"It's sweet and tastes like chocolate, with the nutritional value of milk."

"Are you trying to say something, hag?!"

"Try it. You may like it. If you try and genuinely can't stomach it, I won't force you to drink it. Unless you're really as much of a pansy about milk as Winry always said you were." A challenge?

Well played, hag, well played.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter: Fictional science talk. This is Teen+ so expect some bad language.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.
> 
> I'm thinking that almost a month has passed between the last chapter and this one, so we're around May 10th, 1914 now.
> 
> Please, if you have absolutely any suggestions or criticism, express it, even if it's bad, but please also explain your view if criticizing- I can't fix what I don't know is broken.
> 
> Reviews are welcomed with an open mind and open arms.
> 
> Originally posted on FF.com under the same username.

Within a year of daily use of alchemy, Gaia entertained the idea of deciphering some of Hohenheim's journals. There were a total of five hard-bound journals ensconced in the Elrics' collection. At first, Gaia had been disappointed at the no doubt sparse knowledge the father of modern Alkahestry had deemed to write down, but realized soon enough that he was being cautious, and rightly so.

Gaia knew of Hohenheim's history, and his direct connection to both Alchemy and the Xingese equivalent, Alkahestry. She could vaguely recall the differences between the two from _before,_ but her understanding was already being amplified by her relatively solid interaction with the Dragon's Pulse- another Xingese principal. And yet, the day she finally cracked the code on the journals was the day her understanding of the art would be truly complete – she was sure of it.

For the past few years, she had been trying to live with absolutely no assumptions as to the new world she was in. It was her home now, and who was to say anything she was told by a Japanese woman was what would happen?

But, the hard part was decoding the journals.

The journals, encoded six ways to Sunday, were written in an archaic Germanic language – a language she had vaguely connected to the little Icelandic she had read about for a History project back in her freshman year of high school – in the modern Amestrian script, mirrored on the page, arranged in a Xingese fashion, up and down and right to left, and then encrypted as a gardening manual.

Because Gaia was in no way familiar with Old-German, much less a more than 300 year old dead language, she could only really read a fraction of it, and even that was mostly guesswork. There were only three of the journals encrypted in such a way – a way so complex as to keep unwanted eyes (child's eyes, her mind whispered) from discovering even a sliver of truth.

Her answer came when she began to notice the dotted letters, such as the 'i's and the 'j's had not dots, but circles. Circles with stars in them. With that epiphany, she began seeing the transmutation circles everywhere- in the o's and the g's, in the ӧ's and the u-umlauts. They were tiny indicators- and she knew they had to mean something. She copied the transmutation circle onto a larger sheaf of paper- a five pointed star encase in a circle – and it clicked in her mind what had bothered her so in the weeks-long ordeal.

This wasn't a transmutation circle, but a Xingese Purification circle.

Alkahestry, she new, could be used for healing- that, as well as long-distance transmutations. With Hohenheim's knowledge of its' origins, she would be able to use in developing new applications to the basics of alchemy she had already been using.

Just as she had studied the techniques of master artists from _before,_ she was dead-set on decoding the origins of Alchemy and Alkahestry.

"Why don't you wear that skirt Granny and I got you last year? It should still fit."

"No. I like my pants just fine. I wore them to Central and back, it won't be a problem."

"But Gaia! It's one thing to wear pants in the countryside, and another in the city, where fashion reigns supreme! You've got to conform to some of our standards!" Winry was exasperated, having gone over this with her surrogate sister too many times than she could possibly count.

Gaia looked her up and down, her eyebrow quirking up in dismissal.

"And that skirt is for polite society? At least _you_ put on a real shirt, but could you maybe try to sound less patronizing about the way I dress? You got me wearing socks and shoes, and that's quite enough for me." The blonde sighed, ready to give up the argument if only to stem the oncoming headache. It was true, she had got – basically tackling the taller girl in the process– Gaia to wear a pair of knee-high socks, as the 18 year old wouldn't part with her precious pants, and had even bought her a brand new pair of boots with the substantial commission money they had earned for Edward's repairs.

The 15 year old huffed, drawing herself up, and smoothing out her pleated skirt.

"Alright, be like that. Let's get going, though. We don't want to be late for the train."

They had called.

The Elric brothers had been terse and secretive over the phone, only letting on that they needed Winry's expertise in Central. She was worried, to say the least. She had learned early on that the most important part of a conversation was what was left unspoken, and she could definitely tell there was something fishy about the situation.

Winry startled at the cold hand suddenly appearing on her shoulder, pulling her from her reverie.

"Otto's outside. We should hurry, if you've got everything." The deep voice of the older girl was a soothing balm to her worries, and she nodded tersely. Her hand went into her jacket pocket, fingering the bolt she had, ahem, forgotten to use on Ed's arm. She felt a wave of guilt slide through her- the brothers led busy and dangerous lives, from what she had been able to glean of her Grandmother's talk with Major Armstrong, and she wouldn't be able to settle her soul if her blunder had gotten her boys hurt.

She nodded again, letting Gaia lock up the little yellow house they called home, and made her silent way to Otto and her Grandmother, forcing a smile as she greeted the old farmer.

It'd be a long journey to the capitol city of Amestris, but she thought that it would be worth it to see her boys again, after nearly a month of radio silence.

* * *

"Ed said he'd send someone we'd recognize for sure, but who could that be?" The blonde girl looked to her right at her sister, who had put on a pair of sunglasses, who was staring ahead at something. When she followed her gaze, she knew exactly who was sent for them. Standing at more than seven feet tall, Major Armstrong was absolutely unmistakable to either of the girls.

Winry grabbed the taller girl's arm and fought her way through the crowd to the ridiculously tall man.

"Major Armstrong!"

"Oh! Miss Rockbell, Miss Maurer! Good to see you again!"

* * *

Gaia stood outside the door that led to Edward Elric's room, legs and arms crossed as she listened into what seemed to be a spirited discussion filled with worry, relief, and denials. She decided to wait for the two teenagers to sort their shit out before walking in to whatever mess was next on her list of no-fly zones.

Just as the arguments began to die down, the door to her left opened, and out walked the hulking metal figure of the youngest Elric. She watched as he lumbered down the hall, his soleret clanking as they met the tile floor of the hospital.

Gaia sighed as she sat next to the sullen boy, cocking her head to the side so as to see him clearly.

"Hey there, little man. You were wise to clear out of there, the blondes are having another one of their lover's spats."

The fact that Alphonse didn't even chuckle clued her in on the problem. His silence was unsettling, and the way he leaned forward made her want to hug him, an unusual move for her, as she wasn't the most touchy-feely person you could think of, but she thought maybe because he was entirely metal it'd be different. And then, she felt terrible for even thinking of him as better because he didn't have a conventional body.

"You're the first person to call me little since I got stuck in this suit of armor." His voice was hollow, more so than ever before, and her shoulders slumped as she realized just how _real_ his worries were. Would he ever recover his body? She couldn't say for sure, because she didn't believe in believing in everything she had read _before_ to dictate how these people should end up in the future. Even if every external stimuli was the same, the reactions of human beings would forever be a mystery, and doubly so with teenagers under pressure.

"Want to talk about anything with an impartial party?"

"You wouldn't understand, even if I did explain everything."

He was intimidating, yes, but he was also a lost little boy- barely a teenager at 14 years of age- who had gone through trauma potent enough that he didn't remember it.

"Sometimes someone who doesn't understand is the best person to help with such a problem, you know?"

"Maybe." He sighed, at least that was the impression Gaia got, and turned his helmet-head to look at her with his glowing red eyes. He seemed to be assessing her, and she privately wondered if she even wanted to be deemed worthy of this boy's trust. His 'eyes' on her, she felt like she was standing in an airport security scanner, one of the ones they installed in most major airports, nervous without any real reason to be, because the only metal she could have possibly had on her is that metal hairpin in her pocket from a century ago.

And then he looks away, and the feeling is gone but Gaia Maurer still feels pinpricks at the base of her skull.

"I don't know how much brother has told you, but how he got injured is really complicated and I don't think anyone would believe us anyway, but..."

She has the inexplicable urge to ask 'but, what?' but refrains and lets him muster the courage he needs to spill the soul-deep worries trapped in his metal shell.

"But the thing is, it's not complicated at all."

And Gaia Maurer simply stared ahead as Alphonse explained in his high, prepubescent voice exactly how fucked up this world is; to him, to her, and to anyone else stuck in this god-awful country saturated in the blood of millions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The author has ambushed you! You're backed into a corner by the scary redhead!
> 
> What do you do?!
> 
> You answer her questions, of course!
> 
> So, I'm thinking of changing the summary- what do you guys think I should include in this one? For example, what would you want to know before diving into Enigma?
> 
> I've also decided that, to keep up my motivation, I'll be writing drabbles and oneshots in the world of Enigma that I'll publish as a separate story. Any suggestions on what my darling readers would like to see?
> 
> Review or Private Message me (if you're shy) with your answers.
> 
> And remember that reading reactions on this fic is what gets you the next chapter in less than a month!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter: Feels.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.
> 
> AN: This chapter was quite a lot of work to write, with formatting and the inclusion of canonical scenes in a way that the story fits with what I'm trying to do, as you shall soon see, and I'm sure some of you know what is coming, something that was already hard to read, so if you spot any plot holes or grammar mistakes please point them out.

Gaia, Alphonse, and Edward sat in the bare hospital room, silent, as Winry and Mr. Hughes burst into it. Winry was on the verge of tears as she ran towards her sister, spluttering apologies and hugging the taller girl tightly.

"Win, it's alright. You called, didn't you?" Gaia patted her head, reassuring in her tight grip around Winry's shoulders.

"I know! But I'm so so so sorry, I left you here and totally forgot about you and I feel absolutely awful-" she cut herself off, guilty once again.

"I forgot about you." Another caress of her head, and a sigh rumbled through the chest she pressed her face against.

"Alright, alright. Stop that now, okay? You're embarrassing me. I've got a hard-ass image to maintain, you know?" her tone, despite the words, was soft and understanding. The shorter blonde stepped away, sniffling as she wiped at her eyes.

"I'm really sorry."

"Miss Maurer? I should be the one to apologize." Gaia turned to look at the tall dark-haired man standing behind her sister, hand rubbing at the back of his head as a cheesy grin took over his face.

"I'm Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes, and you must be Gaia Maurer! Sorry for dragging Miss Winry away, you see I was very excited because my daughter turned three today and..."

Gaia looked on with fond eyes as Hughes's mouth ran away in his recollection of the day's events, spouting anecdotes and endearments for his family. She recalled her devastation at his death in the manga and anime- he was the reason she didn't have the heart to watch the first show, even though she reread the books over and over and over again. She always skipped his demise, she remembers.

She had told herself that she wouldn't assume anything about her new world, her new home, but at this moment she was hard-pressed not to run out of the hospital straight back to Resembool and maybe even past the desert to Xing, leaving everything behind because dammit she already knew she wouldn't be able to resist falling farther down the hole of no return if she got closer to any more of these people. These people who were pure, unadulterated good. These people who, for lack of a better term, were her family.

She didn't have the heart to leave Winry and Pinako, though. She had lived for three years in their company, learned alchemy from books they had managed to salvage before the Elric's house was burned, and most importantly come to love them as if they were her true sister and grandmother, respectively.

And now, for better or for worse, she had two younger brothers to look after that she couldn't abandon, either. Alphonse had spilled his guts to her only a few hours previous, but now they had developed some type of emotional bond that rooted them to each other. Edward was a package deal, in a way. The little runt was young and stupid, for a child genius, anyway, and needed help from anyone he could get it from. She is willing to give him that.

By the time Gaia, Winry, and the Lieutenant Colonel had reached the Hughes residence, a two-story townhouse with a robust garden in the front, Hughes had gone through the entire story of how Gracia and he had met, married, and the moment Elicia was born. He was getting close to her first birthday when Gracia Hughes herself walked out of the door, her figure silhouetted against the light of the doorway in the nighttime.

Hughes rushed forward to embrace his wife and introduce her to their newest guest, and Gaia did not in the slightest feel guilty at the relief she felt when his tirade stopped.

"This is my wonderful, beautiful, kind wife, Gracia!" The woman in the doorway smiled and blushed prettily, stepping aside to let the two girls into the house.

"It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Hughes. I hope we won't be an inconvenience to you for the duration of our stay." Gaia said, bowing slightly to the shorter woman.

"Oh, you're no inconvenience at all, dear. We've got two spare guestrooms, and I've already set them up for your use." the green-eyed woman smiled brightly, and all of a sudden Gaia and Winry both understood how well suited Gracia and Maes Hughes were to each other.

Gaia looked to the staircase at the end of the small foyer, not at all surprised when a tiny child stumbled down the stairs in pink striped pajamas, clutching a plush bunny and trailing a blue blanket behind her.

She rubbed at one eye, yawned, and looked up with gigantic green orbs to the adults (and teenagers) around her.

The most common eye color in Amestris was blue, paired with light brown or blonde hair, though as in most other countries dark hair was also a common sight. Skin colors ranged from very dark, as she had seen before in America when she visited one summer, to porcelain-pale, but most had a cool, pink, or peachy undertone.

Green eyes were a rare sight in Amestris, with hazel or brown being a lot more common. It was estimated that only 1 in 5,000 people had eyes of that color in all of Amestris.

So, it was understandable that when Elicia Hughes looked into Gaia Maurer's eyes, the first thing she assumed was that they were somehow related.

The fact that she automatically assumed she was her 'Aunty' was nothing short of the most adorable blow to her ego Gaia had ever received.

* * *

A week later, Gaia walked back from the military hospital intent on finding the street market she had visited during her vacation in Central about a month before. She intended to buy some groceries before returning to her temporary residence at the Hughes home to cook dinner for the ridiculously generous family. You could say many things about Gaia Maurer, but she was no free-loader.

With the news that Winry was to leave with the Elric brothers on their way to Dublith on her mind, she mulled over her options. Winry was interested in going to Rush Valley, an automail haven in the mountains just north of Dublith, but had understood that Gaia couldn't come with her so far south because of her medical condition. Though the green eyed young woman had gotten used to the muggy hot air of Resembool over the past three or so years since her arrival there, the thinner air of the mountains coupled with little cover from the dry sunny climate would not bode very well for her sub-par adaptation skills. The most obvious destination after that was to return to Granny Pinako and Resembool, yet there was a matter she wanted to address before she skipped town.

That matter, unfortunately, was proving to be entirely too elusive for her tastes.

She had located Central Headquarters, the building in which Hughes worked, and marked out on a map, which she had bought off a tourist shop during her last visit to Central City, every phone booth in its' vicinity that a bleeding man could drag himself to.

That gave her, she thought, about a mile-wide radius to be thorough, with a few hundred meters away from the main entrance being her primary focus.

There were exactly 47 phone booths within a mile of the damned building, 13 of which fell in her target area.

Now on her way back, map in her pocket and bags in her hands, the plastic cutting into her palms as her stupid shoes clunked along on the sidewalk, Gaia felt at a loss. These weren't characters to her anymore- hadn't been for a while- but she felt an obligation to at least try to prevent one of her favorites from his fate. Along with Olivier Armstrong and Riza Hawkeye, Maes Hughes was the character she had loved the most, and had bemoaned the loss of the most as well.

Now that she had the chance, even though it was a goddamn slim one, of saving him, she had to take that risk.

Then she was back at the fairy tail-looking cottage with the literal white picket fence, and a small ball of energy was hurling at her from between two bushes of lilac. She heard the tell-tale laugh of the little girl's mother in the background, and smiled before dropping the bags in her arms and scooping up the pig-tailed child, swinging her around and around as she squealed in delight.

Gaia had been christened as Aunty by Elicia, and in the two days since their first meeting the three year old had become attached to her new (doting) semi-relative like it was nobody's business. Gaia, ever the mature adult, had caved within days to the huge green eyes and become her new cuddle-buddy and play-mate, throwing the little girl up into the air and spinning her around and tickling her to her heart's content.

Gaia was all about honesty in the sight of adversity, and she had to concede that having the tiny body radiating warmth next to her as she fell asleep was helpful in staving off unwanted memories and dreams. She had tried to dissuade the munchkin from sleeping with her, but the little girl was surprisingly stubborn when she wanted to be.

The little girl's parents weren't surprised at her quick attachment to Gaia, laughing it off as their cute daughter being friendly and kind, and the eighteen year old couldn't understand how accepting of her they were. She had been living with them for a week, now, at the insistence of both Gracia and Maes, who even went so far as to claim that he wouldn't dream of putting out his sister-in-law while she was still in Central.

In her humble opinion, they were entirely too trusting, but she acceded that she did come as a friend of the Elric brothers, apparently a high honor.

So she stayed, cooked, and played. She plotted and planned and hid her schemes behind smiles all while coming up with new ways that life could carry on in the perfect little way it was now, picket-fence, lilac bushes and all.

* * *

Then came the night when even after careful planning and preparation, her heart beats fast and heavy in her chest as she runs to a telephone booth screaming, begging, praying the man inside is still breathing.

* * *

There are no flowers. The green of the cloth across dark wood is different than that of the grass. Everyone is wearing black, the wretched color, and it's not fair that her leather coat, one of the last reminders that she came from another world entirely, blends in so well within the small gathering.

Gaia stood to the side of the two mourning Hughes', solemn as she watched the coffin be lowered into the ground. The sky seemed to have ignored the somber mood, bright sunlight- too bright- streaming down to bring out the hard contrast of the hole in the earth.

Gracia is crying, everyone is crying, Elicia is confused, and Gaia feels so very alone. She knew Maes Hughes for approximately a week and a half before she had his blood on her hands.

The viscous blood on her hands as she pressed her palms to the hole in his chest.

Her hands are shaking, now, and she slides her eyes shut beneath the wide-brimmed hat. She flinches at the sound of the muskets as they fire off a 21-gun salute, like a jolting reminder that Major General Maes Hughes was a military man who died with a bullet in his chest.

It takes every sliver of control she has to not charge at the homunculus standing to her right.

She hides her shaking hands within the deep pockets of her coat, clenching them into tight fists as she staves off the urge to plunge the bastard's sword into his heart.

She is only human, after all, and needs to bide her time in the vengeance she will bring upon his god damned being.

* * *

A private memorial service is held in the Hughes home for family and close friends during which Gaia stayed close to the widow and her daughter, taking Elicia into her arms when the condolences and pity began to wear on her small shoulders.

She was so very confused as to why Daddy wasn't coming home, and it was heartbreaking.

Gaia had finally put Elicia to sleep, after many hugs and reassurances and tears. She headed downstairs to help with cleaning up when she heard a deep voice paying its' respects to Gracia. Gaia crept down the stairs slowly so as not to make the floorboards squeak, and peeked into the entrance-way.

"I'm sorry, Gracia."

"Roy, you don't have to be sorry, it was _not_ your fault. Just, promise me you won't tear yourself apart over this. I am working on living through this, and so should you. You've got friends and family to help you, just like I do. And of course, our home is your home if you need anything at all."

"Thank you, Gracia. I'll try." He looked up from the home's matriarch, and in the process caught Gaia standing by the doorway.

"I didn't catch your name, miss." It was obviously a command, and she remembered faintly that she should have been embarrassed at walking in on something that was apparently private.

At the moment, she couldn't give a single fuck for propriety or manners in this backwards world.

"My name is Gaia Maurer. We've spoken before."

Roy Mustang's eyes widened at the distinct tenor of her voice, and his face paled.

"You're the one who found Maes-" he refused to get choked up, she noticed, stopping before his voice cracked and he broke the perfectly composed facade he was sporting.

She respected that, in a way.

' _Mr. Hughes! Please, please don't close your eyes. Hold on! Fucker, hold on, dammit! NO! Fuck that! Gracia and Elicia are waiting at the house, keep it together, man!' The static cut out the rest of her crass words before a gasping, rasping voice came over the speaker of his office phone._

" _My name is Gaia Maurer, I'm – I was a friend of L. Col. Maes Hughes. Send someone to help me, please. I'm about to pass out, I think, there's a lot of blood. Please."_

His eyes misted over, and he bowed at the waist towards her.

"Thank you for everything you did for him in his last moments, Miss Maurer."

Uncomfortable, she inclined her head in return. "I just wish I could have done more, Sir..."

Getting the hint, he supplied her with an extended hand and a sad, broken smile.

"Mustang. Roy Mustang."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, please don't come to my house with pitchforks and torches, I know I'm a monster.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for the chapter: Feels. Also Roy is a warning in and of himself, so...
> 
> Disclaimer: Not mine. To see original content, look up Hiromu Arakawa.
> 
> Words: 1,213: Less than the last few chapters, but it was important, I think, for this scene to be separate from the ones coming up.

He felt dirty and weary as he watched the girl in front of him down another Schnapps, the hard liquor making her wince imperceptibly as it burned down her throat. He watched with a morbid fascination as she dragged her hand across her mouth before narrowing her eyes at him and his half-empty beer.

"Playing dirty, aint'cha, Cur- Col- Colonel? Hah! Getting a nin'teen year old drunk to ext-e-extract inf- fuck it, info. Am fuckin' dun with this fuckin' lang-language." Maurer slurred and hiccuped her way through her loud declaration, and he realized with little surprise that the young woman was finally and truly drunk to her ears. He felt a sense of somber satisfaction at the fact that she was going to feel it the next morning, as she had robbed him of this month's salary over the last three hours of drinking he had accompanied her on.

He was in Central to investigate his best friend's murder, and this little girl (she was nineteen, barely, but he didn't want to think about the fact that he was ten years her elder) had been on the scene of the crime, had heard Maes' last words, and he needed information.

Getting people drunk usually loosened them up to invasive questions, but this girl, Gaia Maurer, seemed to be a special case. She'd gone through more shots and pints than he could count, and only now could he see the healthy flush of alcohol in her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose.

He would try his luck anyway, in this secluded booth of a back-alley bar. He lent forward, catching the bright green eyes from under hooded eyelids with his own dark stare. "I'll ask you this question once, and only once. I want you to answer me, understood?" The girl-woman nodded blearily, but her eyes held a keen spark that told him she was still at least half-lucid. He wasn't going to risk going bankrupt tonight, though, so Roy Mustang hoped the less-than lucid half of her mind would make up for what the alcohol couldn't cloud.

"Did you murder Lieutenant Colonel, now Major Colonel, Maes Hughes?" His voice was firm, and he hoped she understood his question over the din of the bar.

"Hahahihihi nah. Funny, you are. I tried -hic- to... uratować… 'im, tho. Kurde, co to słowo, uh... save? Save 'im. Maes był dobry." Some of those words he didn't understand, and he didn't have the patience at the moment to tell her to repeat herself- he was the one who topped off each of her drinks, after all.

She mumbled some more to herself, all in that harsh undecipherable way, and he wondered if she was speaking in another language altogether. It didn't sound like Xingese or Cretan, the two most common foreign languages in Amestris (even though they were such a small minority it was laughable), it had too little vowels and had too clipped of a sound to it to be Cretan, but the individual words seemed to be longer than the two syllable words of the Xingese.

In all honesty, he didn't care. He hadn't truly believed Gaia Maurer to be Maes' murderer- she sounded so desperate and emotional over the phone that his suspicions were little more than paranoia and his usual thoroughness shining through his despair.

And yes, he did despair. He may have hidden it well from his subordinates, but he knew only pain for the weeks following the startling news. Maurer would be called in in the next few days for a witness's statement on the murder, but he had needed to know before he had to wait weeks, if ever, to read her transcript.

"Alright, Maurer. Can you answer me this- what were you doing when you came across Maes Hughes' body?" His tone was cold, tired. He hoped the icy tone didn't wake her up from the drunken stupor she was in, because he was much too exhausted to check his tone of voice.

He felt slightly sick at that admission, because, as Maurer had stated herself, he had gotten a nineteen year old drunk to question her in an inebriated state.

That was wrong even for him, and he knew then that he'd need to make this quick before he lost his courage.

He was going to hell either way, why not add on to his growing list of sins?

"He called -hic- Gracy, told 'er he was gunna be... late... I, ugh, I... um went to? To HQ to give 'im his dinner. An- and I heard a gun- gunshot and oh o Boże it was –" Her eyes were clearing, and god how was that fucking possible, what kind of monster was this woman that it only took this long before she was sober?

Ah, no, he soon found out that what he had mistaken for her sobering up was her beginning to cry. And dammit if he was weak for one thing, it was crying women. It wasn't that he didn't know what to do in the event of one beginning to get emotional – all they usually needed was a literal shoulder to cry on and some empty words of comfort – but it was that he always felt a sense of obligation to make sure they would be okay that really got to him. Usually, he would pride himself on his seemingly inbred sense of gentlemanly chivalry, but right now he needed none of it.

Roy Mustang, guiltily, wondered if he still had time to high-tail it out of here.

A sob shook leather-clad shoulders.

He was done for.

Roy stood up, carefully slid around the table, and pulled the woman up onto her feet, where he held her shoulders as she regained her balance.

Another sob came out of her mouth, and Roy pulled her left arm over his shoulders. He was, once again, struck at her height. He only knew one other woman of her stature (if not taller) and was hard-pressed not to shudder at the comparison. If she was related to the Armstrongs, he knew he was even more screwed than he was slowly realizing now.

Surreptitiously, he checked her hair for any sign of the patent curl that would seal his fate, and sighed in relief when her mane of hair exposed no genetic resemblance to his long-standing rival.

In the end, as they (he) walked down the darkened streets in the early June weather, her height was a boon. At some point, they had found a park bench upon which the two rested, Roy rubbing his sore shoulders, (half-dragging and half-carrying a nearly unconscious woman equal to you in height was not an easy job, alright?) and Maurer with her head between her legs. He vaguely considered that that was probably not the best way to sit in her state, but didn't voice his thoughts as he watched her dry-heave and sob, both in equal abandon.

"I- I, he was gud man. A very -hic- good man. Why did he die?! Why?! Why didn' I save him?!"

He blames his own tipsiness and tired mind for reaching out to lay a comforting hand on her back.

Damn her tears. Damn the cloudiness in his own gaze.

He swore it was just the rain.


	9. Chapter 9

Gaia felt like shit.

She was someone who enjoyed the truth and facts, as she had always felt almost nauseous after telling lies of her own. She was blunt and harsh in her words to others and to herself, holding back little to nothing when it came to observations and opinions- she was raised by a very opinionated and driven mother and a father who worked in the journalism industry for many years- the truth of every matter as she saw it was ingrained in her being from the moment she was conceived.

So yeah, she felt like shit.

She had let herself get blackout drunk with a man she did not know. A member of the military regime who had plied her for information, whether for his own purposes or for the state.

God, she felt like crap.

But then again, wasn't this one of her favorite characters? Didn't she know his motivations and morals? He had done this with grief in his eyes, and patted her back as she puked her guts out, and got her home. That had to count for something, right?

And so the truth of the matter hit Gaia Maurer in the face, her poor throbbing face, that this was a man she did not know outside of written word, who had a skewed sense of morality and justice, wracked with grief over the murder of his best friend. He was a war hero, a war criminal, with a personal agenda she, in all actuality, did not have a shred of an idea of.

She could _not_ take the word of fiction, however much it was real to her now, as fact. Relationships took time to cultivate, to maintain, and to solidify. She had a year before the Promised Day, by her calculations, and who the fuck knew what could happen between then and now.

Now.

Right now, she had a headache that seemed to pulse through her entire body, and the sheer drapes on her room's windows were letting entirely too much light in. Gaia tried to sit up, propping her upper body up on her elbows, but the jostling made her headache stronger and the subsequent thump into her feather pillow as she turned onto her stomach hurt even more.

She resolved to rest some more, wallowing in self pity and the burgeoning aversion she felt at any thought of a smug pale face with dark eyes and hair.

Fucking Roy Mustang. He would pay for his _audacity_ -

Fuck – fuck – large words _hurt_.

A soft knock on the door was felt as much as hurt, then, before a groan escaped her throat. The slight squeak of the hinges felt like nails were being hammered into her skull.

"Good morning, Gaia." Gracia's voice. Thank god it wasn't the little hellion.

A groan.

"I see last night hasn't done you any favors, huh?" There was humor in the mother's voice, which was entirely unwelcome in the room.

"Roy dropped you off, but you were barely coherent, so I wanted to give you your medicine now rather than when you would have been more likely to have thrown it up than let it help you." God bless this sweet, sweet woman.

A glass clinked onto the table by her bed, and Gaia peeled open a single eye to see that it had ice in it, and two white oblong pills were sitting beside it.

Gracia Hughes was an angel, no questions asked.

* * *

Three days later, and Gaia Maurer found herself in Central's Military Headquarters lobby, feeling no less like shit. Her hangover was long gone, sure, but now she sat alone, emotions in turmoil, her mind roiling with the strange sense that she was awaiting her own doom.

She was sure that the amount of time that it took to wait until you were called in was another tactic of mental torture the military had found most effective- she was ready to get this over with _yesterday._

Gaia stared ahead, at the approaching Private (she could tell by the nervousness around him that he was new) heading straight at the seats arranged along the white wall of the waiting room. There had been around thirty of these nervous message-boys who had already passed by, so she was fairly positive this one wasn't here for her either.

"U-um, Miss Maurer?" Correction: she was about to be set free.

"Yes."

"Could you come with me, ma'am?" He couldn't have been a year over 18 – which was what she was told the standard enlistment age in Amestris was. He was some inches shorter than her, something that honestly wasn't that unusual, and still had spots on his face.

She was also not about to correct his grammar, as much as her deep-seated Grammar-Nazi wanted to.

"Where to?" She was sure her brusque way of speaking was putting the boy off, but sue her for using her preservation tactics in an unfamiliar situation.

"Your presence was requested for a private meeting, miss."

She heaved herself forward, the bone deep exhaustion she had been feeling for nearly three weeks now hitting her like a sledgehammer. The soldier obviously didn't know what to do with her frailty, and almost jumped at her command to get a move on – she didn't have all day.

"Y-yes ma'am!"

She was led through multiple hallways and up two floors before stopping behind a pair of large wooden doors.

They didn't look anything like what she vaguely remembered from her last stay in the capital of Amestris, but she wasn't exactly guilty of committing a crime against the state now, was she.

Her escort knocked on the door, before bowing to her and scampering away. She followed him with her eyes, but turned away when she saw the doors were being opened.

The doors, the ornate, expensive-looking blockades, led to an elaborate office. One wall entirely covered with equally ornate windows, a heavy wooden desk with a large plush chair in the center situated close to those windows, and two comfortable-looking chairs pointed towards the desk.

The corruption in the Dragon's pulse flooded her senses, and she froze in her spot just inside the room.

All rational thought fled at the sight of a blue-tinted black iris staring at her from behind crinkled eyes.

_Gaia Maurer stiffened, horror shining in her bright eyes, and turned on the spot, only to realize her only means of escape had been closed and most likely locked, but that didn't stop her from banging on the heavy dark wood, screaming, shouting, with no words able to escape her muddled mind, her only thoughts revolving around help and escape and please please let me out, you EVIL FUCKERS!_

She wanted to, that is, but her body was frozen as if in a block of ice, a paralyzing shiver stuck somewhere between her shoulder blades, tensing her shoulders to a painful degree.

The scraping of a chair.

A calm voice.

"Why don't you come and take a seat, Ms. Maurer?" His tone was fatherly, but as she looked at him, back braced against the door, green eyes analyzing every inch of the muscled figure, he looked anything but. A cold eye fixed upon her, his straight, intimidating posture lax- she could see he was ready to spring at any moment, his muscles deceptively relaxed, like a black panther she had once seen through a television screen, _before_.

She wanted to sob. He knew her name, and she wanted someone, anyone, to help her, to get her out, and fuck this was the closest she had been to a panic attack in, like, 3 years.

But the fact remained that Fuhrer King Bradley was in the same room as her, and she really really _really_ wanted to be anywhere but near him at that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this the set-up for the first major Arc of Enigma? Why yes it is, dear reader, yes. it. is.


	10. Chapter 10

The Fuhrer of Amestris, King Bradley, sat straighter behind the large mahogany desk. He puled towards him, without breaking eye contact with Gaia, a large file from the corner of the desk. He opened it, but Gaia's eyes were as if super-glued to his one, bluish-black iris.

"Just because your family history 'checks out' doesn't mean your appearance in my personal study has been forgotten." Gaia knew that, she knew that, but being told so being face to face with the goddamn Fuhrer was pretty hard-hitting to her psyche.

"If a 16 year old with no knowledge of how she came to be in a secured facility can enter the Fuhrer's personal quarters with nary a security alarm, then we've got a problem. It could mean a major security breach, don't you agree?"

He made a damn good point, and without right out stating he was suspicious of her, too, the bastard.

And honestly, Gaia had not seen his being a homunculus from afar when she was reading about this world. He had been in power for quite a long time, and no one in the series had seemed to find him suspicious in the slightest – right up until he massacred Greed and his underlings. Even Mustang saw him only as an obstacle on his way to his ultimate goal – being the Fuhrer.

"But first, I have some questions to ask you – would you indulge an old man?

"Alright, fire way."

"Good, good. Tell me, have you had any formal training in Alchemy?" Gaia shook her head.

"No? That will have to be rectified." he muttered under his mustache, and she was almost scared of what that would entail.

"Mister Fuhrer, why are you doing this?"

"You mean trying to learn more about a talented young Alchemists such as yourself?" he rested his chin on his laced fingers, staring at her with his dark eye.

Apparently, he was going to indulge her.

"No, sir. Why are you putting so much of your personal time into interrogating somebody like me? I understand the security risk my appearance three years ago caused, but I'm sure you have military personnel trained for extracting knowledge from suspects in Military crimes, such as I am now."

She knew it was stupid to press him, to test his patience so much, especially as his temper could flare dangerously at any moment. His embodiment of a deadly sin was Wrath for a reason.

"You are more a witness than a suspect to the murder of Brigadier General Maes Hughes, Miss Maurer, and so until his murderer is caught and brought before a tribunal, you will not be interrogated. You are here because your dedication to the science of Alchemy has been carefully observed during your stay in Resembool, and it is certainly viewed by specialists as a drive that not many hold in this field – and of those who are as driven to perform, the majority are State Alchemists. Furthermore, having you under me as a State Alchemist would be beneficial in my surveillance of your movements."

Gaia stared at the (second) most powerful man in this country, nearly gaping. She had expected the compliments – not because of her being arrogant in her alchemical proficiency, but because it was easier to catch a fly with honey rather than vinegar.

But for him to outright tell her he was watching her, he must have been angling for something.

So, here was the Fuhrer-President taking an interest in her, her history, and her Alchemy. That's when it really sank in-

"You want me to become a state Alchemist."

And, furthermore, he wanted her in the State Military to keep her under his thumb – which meant the homunculi and Father probably knew about her.

That was, undoubtedly, bad news- very very bad news.

The homunculus laughed long and hard, and she wondered how he could make it sound so warm and patronizing at the same time.

"A sound conclusion, dear Miss Maurer, and true."

"There's another more important reason as well, Miss Maurer, that you have been brought before me. I'm sure you've heard of the recent pardoning of a State Alchemist by the name of Solf J. Kimblee?" His one eye born into hers.

She forgot how to breathe. Flashes of red, of entire neighborhoods burning, body parts blown across blocks from explosions so powerful that -

They stay with you forever, those memories. And even if this particular Gaia Maurer did not live in this world for 16 years, she remembers the scorched sand and screams and the Cheshire Cat grins.

She has no words, no thoughts as to where this damn half-man is taking this conversation, so she sits and stares and says nothing as he signs for death warrant with honeyed words.

"Ah yes, it seems you've heard of him. I pardoned him myself for one purpose – for him to carry out my bidding, do my dirty work for me. Running a country such as Amestris is a hard job, you must understand, and requires me to take, ahem, some drastic and decidedly underhanded methods, While still keeping up appearances for the masses.

"Now, don't misunderstand, Miss Maurer. I know perfectly well that Kimblee's a psychopath – but right now, he is a _loyal_ psychopath. As long as I give him enough lee-way to use his own Alchemy and spread his own brand of chaos, he will follow orders." He sat back in his plush chair, steeping his fingers in front of him.

"That, unfortunately, will not last. Someone as volatile as Kimblee is not only hard to control, but also hard to keep satisfied. He'll get cocky, too arrogant in his position of power. And then he will become useless to me. That is where you will come in, Miss Maurer. You will be the counterweight in my operation – your strong morals to his lack of a moral code, your clear head to his chaotic mind. And most importantly, you will be his _executioner._ " Gaia startled at the snarled word.

"You will be apprenticed to Kimblee, you will learn everything you can about him, and his alchemy. You will then judge the best way to dispose of him. I am sure, Ms. Maurer, that you will enjoy dispatching him immensely."

Gaia's eyes narrowed, her hands ripping the armrests of her chair, and barked "I would never enjoy killing someone! Even that bloody murderer!"

"I believe I have misjudged you, I'm sorry. But, tell me, would this not be the perfect opportunity to avenge the thousands he slaughtered? I know you were in Ishval, during the Civil War. One of the Rockbell's patients, were you not? A lost little orphan girl, stranded in a war zone."

How could he have known that? She hadn't said anything about it during her detainment years ago. How did he know?!

"When in containment three years ago, you were reported to have spoken in your sleep. The words kill, genocide, Ishval, blood, and desert were recorded as having been uttered, so it was not too hard to come to the right conclusion, no? In addition to that, the surveillance we had on you in Resembool picked up hints of your history with the late Rockbell couple."

"I- why should I accept? I'd be signing my life away to the crazy arsonist, with no guarantee of survival. I could get Major Armstrong to be my teacher, and take the exams in my own time – if I even wanted to. Why should I risk my life to do something that I may not even be able to do?"

"Aha, dear Gaia," she did _not_ like how her name sounded, dripping like oil from his lips, "You act like you have a choice – like you have nothing, _no one_ , to lose." He was smug, oh so smug, and Gaia's soul seemed to freeze up in realization.

"Quite frankly, I thought you'd be quicker than this."

Oh dear Lord, he was right. She didn't have any realistic choice – her family and friends would be put on the line.

Winry – if she didn't agree to this, Winry would bear the brunt of the harm.

Gaia should have known he wasn't beyond blackmail.

And dammit, it worked like a fucking charm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm working on some one-shots already, and if you want me to finally upload something, message me or drop a comment!

**Author's Note:**

> Yes? No? Maybe so?


End file.
